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Brands & Merch Business News
IODA founder launches new visuals hub for the music community
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 27 February 2014
Kevin Arnold, founder of indie label distributor IODA (which subsequently merged with The Orchard), has an interesting new venture going on.
OpenAura aims to be a hub for official visuals generated by or associated with musical talent. The new venture will then provide access to all that visual content to companies wanting to use photos, artwork and images for new products or services, whether visuals are at the heart of those ventures, or a way to make for a more compelling audio-based platform.
Said ventures will pay for access to the image library, with income shared between OpenAura, featured artists and whoever owns the copyright in the visual material (likely to be photographer or label). Arnold has struck up alliances with a number of artist management companies to get things rolling.
Commenting on the venture, which has some backing from Sony Music, where Arnold ended up after it bought IODA in 2009, the OpenAura man told Billboard: “In today’s world where fans engage directly with artists in many ways across many networks and platforms, the 80s-bio-and-photo-press-kit version of identity isn’t good enough. With connected screens everywhere and fans consuming and creating content at breakneck pace, the industry needs a better visual content offering to move music user experiences forward”.
